Identifying the favourite snacks of one of Australia’s cutest animals no longer need rely on guesswork or picking apart their poop, according to University of the Sunshine Coast research.
Although the shortened title of her latest paper is The future is faeces , Associate Professor Dominique Potvin and colleagues want to make the task less of a hands-on hit-and-miss job.
Traditionally the diet of endangered greater gliders – fluffy-eared nocturnal herbivores who soar majestically from tree to tree – has been deciphered quite primitively.
But now Dr Potvin says DNA testing of the gliders’ excrement could allow scientists to stop manually digging through their droppings, using eyesight to guess what the gunk may be.
“The methods used previously weren’t particularly accurate,” Dr Potvin said.
“You would either sift through stomach contents or poop to identify plant material by sight, or you’d try and see what trees the greater gliders were eating in.
“By using DNA we’ve been able to establish some quite surprising findings that have made us rethink a few things – and could potentially change vegetation strategies.
“Foremost, greater gliders are not quite the fussy eaters we thought and are open to a wider variety of nutritional sources.”
Using a recently developed genetic tool that was originally designed for koalas, the UniSC researchers analysed 24 faecal samples from across south-east Queensland.
Dr Potvin said, altogether, 17 different plant species were identified via DNA sequencing.
“Some of the plant types we found in their diet had never been documented before and were quite unexpected,” Dr Potvin said.
“It’s generally been thought that greater gliders feed exclusively on foliage from the eucalyptus genus, but we recorded the presence of acacia, casuarina, angophora and corymbia species.
“Another thing we found was that gliders from different areas might be eating different things, which warrants further investigation.
“The information we’ve gathered will allow us to recommend what trees need to be prioritised in glider habitats, a vital part of saving a species in decline.”
Collaborating with Dr Potvin on the research were UniSC colleagues Mikaela Bratovic and Dr Linda Moss, along with University of Queensland scientists Associate Professor Celine Frere, Dr Nicola Jackson and Dr Michaela Blyton.
Their research has been published in the Journal of Mammalogy .
